In March of 1987, something happened at Kearney State College that most of us believed was physically impossible.
They canceled classes because of snow.
To appreciate the significance of this, you have to understand something about college in the 1980s. Elementary schools closed when the roads got slippery. High schools closed when the forecast looked threatening. Colleges, on the other hand, seemed to operate under the assumption that if you were old enough to attend, you were old enough to survive whatever Mother Nature threw at you.
A college snow day was practically a mythical event.
And yet, there it was. On television.
Kearney State College was closing.
The city was being buried beneath one of the worst spring blizzards in years. Snow was piling up faster than anyone could clear it. The wind was driving it into enormous drifts, streets were disappearing, and travel was becoming nearly impossible.
At the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house on 6th Avenue, we had been following the storm with considerable interest.
Several of the guys had even been calling the college, hoping to encourage the administration to make the only sensible decision.
Apparently, someone finally listened.
We had a snow day.
And we had a problem.
We needed beer.
Not just a few beers. Not a couple of six-packs.
A keg.
Specifically, a keg of Coors Light, which was pretty much the official beverage of our fraternity.
We also needed chips and beef sticks. Lots of them. Because if we were going to be trapped in a house full of college guys during a historic blizzard, we needed to make sure we had the essentials.
Fortunately, Bill’s Liquor was only about five blocks away.
Unfortunately, those five blocks might as well have been on another planet.
The streets were nearly impassable. Cars were getting stranded, snowdrifts were swallowing intersections, and the television news was reporting that city crews were concentrating their efforts on clearing major thoroughfares.
Most reasonable people would have accepted the situation, stayed inside, and waited for the storm to pass.
We weren’t most reasonable people.
There were four of us involved in the operation: Bill Howard, Nick Liston, Damian Leuck, and me.
And we had a plan.
More importantly, we had Bill’s car.
Bill owned a turquoise AMC Rambler 990, a vehicle that was already something of an engineering curiosity before you introduced a Nebraska blizzard into the equation.
The body was actually in pretty good shape. The suspension, however, had seen better days.
And the original front seats were gone.
Bill had removed them and replaced them with bass boat fishing chairs mounted on poles and bolted directly to the floor.
Yes. Fishing chairs.
The kind you’d sit in while waiting for a largemouth bass to bite.
Except these were installed in an automobile.
The Rambler also had a three-on-the-tree manual transmission, with the shifter mounted on the steering column. Bill was the only one of us who could operate it smoothly, which made him our designated driver by default.
Between the suspension, the fishing chairs, and the column shifter, the car offered a driving experience that was probably unlike anything AMC had originally intended.
It was perfect.
Well, almost.
We had one additional logistical challenge.
A full keg of beer weighs considerably more than a case of potato chips, and we weren’t particularly confident that the Rambler’s suspension would appreciate the extra weight.
So we came up with a solution.
A toboggan.
We attached a rope to the back of Bill’s Rambler and secured the toboggan behind it. We’d tow the empty sled to Bill’s Liquor, load the keg onto it, and drag the whole thing back to the fraternity house.
It was a remarkably simple plan.
Assuming we could get there.
That was where the city of Kearney came in.
We’d been watching the television reports and knew the snowplows were out working. The city was concentrating on the main streets first, which made sense. Clear the arteries, keep emergency vehicles moving, and eventually work your way into the residential neighborhoods.
Our parking lot adjoined 23rd Street.
We figured that sooner or later, a snowplow would come through.
So we got everything ready.
Four college guys. One turquoise Rambler. Two bass boat fishing chairs. A toboggan attached to the rear bumper.
And we waited.
Then, almost as if someone had arranged it for us, a city snowplow came rolling down 23rd Street, right past our parking lot.
This was our moment.
Bill fired up the Rambler, we piled in, and we pulled out behind the plow.
The city was trying to rescue Kearney from a historic blizzard.
We were using its snow-removal equipment to make a beer run.
And it worked.
We followed the plow east along 23rd Street toward 2nd Avenue, which was one of Kearney’s major north-south roads. We knew 2nd Avenue would have been cleared already, so once we reached it, we could head north toward Bill’s Liquor on 24th Street.
Behind us, the empty toboggan slid along through the snow.
Ahead of us, the plow cleared the way.
And somewhere in the middle was a turquoise AMC Rambler carrying four fraternity brothers who were probably far more pleased with themselves than the situation warranted.
We made it.
Bill’s Liquor was open.
And we went shopping.
We secured our keg of Coors Light, then spent whatever money we had left on as many bags of chips and beef sticks as we could afford.
We weren’t buying groceries.
We were provisioning an expedition.
There was also a small coincidence that made the whole thing even better.
Our driver was Bill Howard.
The store was Bill’s Liquor.
The two Bills weren’t related.
But on that particular night, it seemed like the universe had decided to cooperate with us.
We loaded our supplies, secured the keg on the toboggan, and headed back toward the fraternity house.
Now, an empty toboggan sliding behind a car is one thing.
A toboggan carrying a full keg of Coors Light is something else entirely.
The Rambler’s suspension might not have been up to the task of carrying the keg, but the snow-covered streets were more than capable of giving it a memorable ride.
We dragged that keg through the streets of Kearney behind a turquoise Rambler, making our way back to 6th Avenue while the city continued disappearing beneath the snow.
And somehow, we got everything home.
The fraternity house was already celebrating.
After all, Kearney State had canceled classes. We had been handed something none of us had expected to experience during our college careers.
A genuine, honest-to-goodness college snow day.
And now we had a keg.
We brought it inside, got everything set up, and tapped it.
The first few draws were almost entirely foam.
Apparently, dragging a keg through a blizzard behind an automobile isn’t the recommended method of transporting draft beer.
Who knew?
Eventually, things settled down, the beer began pouring properly, and we settled into the business of enjoying our unexpected holiday.
Outside, Kearney was still in trouble.
The storm was serious. Roads were blocked, people were stranded, and city crews had their hands full trying to dig everyone out.
There was even a story making the rounds about a car abandoned in the middle of a street somewhere around 39th Street.
According to the rumor, one of the city’s big rotary snowplows had come through, encountered the buried vehicle, and essentially eaten it.
Nobody seemed entirely sure what kind of car it was.
But everyone had heard about it.
I never knew whether the story was completely true or had grown a little with each retelling. In a storm like that, though, it didn’t seem particularly hard to believe.
Looking back, I still marvel at the sequence of events.
The college announced a snow day early enough for us to do something about it.
We had a liquor store only five blocks away.
We had a Rambler with fishing chairs for front seats.
We had a toboggan.
And just when we needed one, a city snowplow came rolling past our parking lot and cleared the path for us.
We couldn’t have planned the timing any better.
Actually, we did plan it.
We just couldn’t believe it worked.
Somewhere in Kearney, city crews were working around the clock to dig an entire town out of the snow.
At the Sigma Phi Epsilon house, we were waiting for the beer to stop foaming.
Everybody had their priorities.
And for one glorious day in March of 1987, Kearney State College had given us a miracle.
On 23rd Street.
If this resonated with you, you’re not alone.
